March 28, 2024

BY MELISSA HORTON

In today’s technology-based world, the internet has become a tool to socialize with each other in new and unique ways. However, with this new tool, comes new rules but not everybody plays by them.

Recently, social media networks have come under fire for the content that some users have been posting. One of the most notable is YouTuber Logan Paul, who initiated a never-before-seen level of scrutiny of social media platforms.

Back in December, the notoriously controversial YouTube star posted a video of him and his friends finding a dead body in a forest located in Japan deemed the “Suicide Forest.” Viewers were stunned to see a rather flippant Paul laughing and filming the hanging corpse. Surprise then turned to anger and a call to action began. YouTube did reprimand the 22-year-old by cancelling his YouTube Red projects and in a more recent move, removed ads from his videos, but viewers didn’t think this was enough. It seems that what is deemed as inappropriate is a rather grey area. According to YouTube’s guidelines posted on their website, “Community Guidelines strikes are issued when our reviewers are notified of a violation of the Community Guidelines. This includes but is not limited to videos that contain nudity or sexual content, violent or graphic content, harmful or dangerous content, hateful content, threats, spam, misleading metadata or scams.”

For content creators like Paul, the lines often get fuzzy and can often lead to the question: when do we say enough is enough?
Unilever, a prominent advertising corporation, has recently threatened to pull its ads from websites such as Google and Facebook over concerns of questionable content. As reported by the Washington Post in a Feb. 12 article, Unilever’s Chief Marketing Officer Keith Weed said, “Fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate, toxic content directed at children — parts of the internet we have ended up with is a million miles from where we thought it would take us.”

YouTube has been a company that has tightened the reins on what can be posted but some viewers still feel it isn’t enough. For now, consumers will have to decide when enough is enough.

The views herein represent the position of the newspaper, not necessarily the author.

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